Something in Mira’s state rang wrong, like a string tuned too tight.

Pengpeng watched her clamp down on the Half-moon Mongoose’s throat in one clean motion; the little beast’s two pairs of furry paws flailed in the air like wind-tossed leaves, trying to fight back, but couldn’t reach her at all.

She held every advantage, but Mira wasn’t calm. Her gaze hardened like frost. Her fingers kept tightening. With a strength array behind her grip, fur ground under her hand with a nerve-scraping rasp. The mongoose’s fierce struggle faded, its silver ruff shedding its moonlit sheen—the color of its life draining away.

“Panie!”

Hearing the brittle crack at his pet’s neck, Pengpeng’s adoptive father finally panicked. He tossed the cane Mira had pinned and tried to rush her. Without it, he stumbled and fell at Mira’s feet.

“Dad!”

Pengpeng dropped to her knees to help him up. He didn’t care about his body at all. He grabbed for Mira’s trouser leg first, voice raw as dry bark.

“Don’t—don’t! Don’t kill it…!”

“…”

Mira said nothing. She didn’t lower her eyes for even a heartbeat at the man’s pleading. Her hand cinched tighter, tighter, and the murder in her eyes didn’t thin. Instead, a brutal emotion spread in those dull irises, staining her green pupils with madness—

“—Miss Mira!!! That’s enough!!!”

Pengpeng’s shout tugged Mira’s pupils back into focus. Her grip finally loosened.

The Half-moon Mongoose dropped from the air and hit the floor with a thud, twitching. The old man tore free of Pengpeng’s hold, scrambled to his pet, and hugged it. He pressed a hand to its nose. Feeling the faint breath, he broke and cried, sobs shaking like winter reed.

“Niya’s… already gone. I… I can’t lose you too…!”

At his grief-struck voice, Mira finally lowered her head. An old man wept at her feet. Pengpeng stood by him, trembling and watching.

“Niya… is my foster mother.”

Pengpeng’s voice was small, lost. Her father’s cruelty had already left her at sea. Now his wailing for his dead wife left her more adrift.

“…Sorry.”

After a long beat, Mira spoke softly. Pengpeng looked up. The look she gave Mira wasn’t her usual one. It held distance and fear, like seeing a stranger wearing a familiar face.

“Dad’s not… always like this. He’s never been a man who loves violence. There has to be something else…”

Part pity, mostly to defuse the tinderbox, Pengpeng offered the defense. She had no idea what would happen next.

Mira only bent and picked up a small vial from the floor.

Inside, a gray-white liquid clung like ash-laced milk.

She held it, silent. Long after, she lifted her face and reached toward Pengpeng’s father.

“Miss Mira!”

Pengpeng flinched, thinking Mira would grab him like she’d grabbed the mongoose. She moved to block on instinct, then realized if Mira truly meant to act, Pengpeng couldn’t stop her.

So she let her hands fall. She watched, taut with worry, eyes full of pleading and shaken doubt.

Mira only steadied the old man by the shoulders, coaxing him to lift his face from the mongoose’s fur. She held the vial out.

“This. Where did you get it?”

The old man looked up, baffled, then shrank back at the sight of her. Mira’s hand tightened on his shoulder. She added, plain as a blade, “Did you get this drug from the Medicine Peddler?”

“Med…icine Peddler?” His mouth worked. Then a memory lit. “Y-yes! A freak with his right eye blind knocked on my door. He said if I drank this… I wouldn’t feel anything…!”

“Where did you meet the Medicine Peddler? Do you remember?”

“I remember… of course I remember! He comes to me every so often, brings me this stuff.” He panted, words tumbling. “You want to see him? I can take you to him!”

“…”

At that, Mira fell silent again. No yes, no no, no new questions. She only stared at the bottle in her hand, face wooden. Pengpeng didn’t know what it meant. She swallowed and didn’t dare look away for half a second.

Another breathless wait. Mira finally turned her gaze aside.

“Do you have any more of this?”

“N-no! That’s the last one, give it—give it back—”

“This drug will only make your state worse. Don’t drink it again.”

She cut him off, rose to her feet, and gave Pengpeng one last look.

“Can you handle the rest?” A beat. “I need… a little quiet.”

“Uh—y-yeah. Of course.”

With that, Mira turned for the door, dropped one more low “sorry,” and left Pengpeng’s house.

Pengpeng watched her back slip past the door. Her arms went limp. Her body sagged, like danger had finally passed.

Thinking it through, that felt wrong. Mira had been helping her from start to finish. Without her, the Half-moon Mongoose might’ve sunk its teeth into Pengpeng already.

Even so, once Mira left, Pengpeng couldn’t help breathing out a huge sigh of relief.

No mystery why. Miss Mira’s behavior just now wasn’t like her at all.

Mira was usually cool on the surface, but warm through. She’d done every favor Pengpeng thick-faced asked of her. She even offered the brats a body-tech class. To Pengpeng, she’d always been an ice-beauty who burned inside.

That scene had shattered the picture.

When she recalled that flash of killing intent as Mira choked the mongoose, Pengpeng still shivered.

Mira… today, something’s terribly off.

**

Pengpeng wasn’t wrong. Something in Mira was misaligned.

When she got back to the orphanage last night, her face already looked numb. Pengpeng chalked it up to travel weariness and a spat with her sister. She didn’t think deeper. She didn’t notice the absence of that worn little bell hairpin in Mira’s side locks.

Even if she had, she wouldn’t grasp what it meant.

If Pengpeng knew what that hairpin meant to Mira, she would know this wasn’t just a “spat.”

That numbness was not her baseline.

Pengpeng had only missed the hours when Mira unraveled.

On the first leg back from the Elven capital to Sanda, Mira went a full week without sleep, traveling in silence. The return wasn’t as efficient as the trip out. She lost half her time wandering the forest in circles.

Even then, she didn’t dare make camp and study the map. She didn’t dare sit. She didn’t dare close her eyes. Any chance to think felt lethal—to her mind.

She could only run. Not just from the Elf capital and the Carne Family’s pursuit, but from the storm in her skull. She dodged thought until her body failed and forced her down.

That was when the hysteria began. The moment she lay in the sleeping bag, no longer keeping every nerve on her footfalls, memory flooded her skull like a breached river.

It was like when she first reached Sanda—everything she saw led back to her sister. Only this time, the pain was a thousandfold. Back then, she could summon the warm fragments of their past. Now the only reel was that night—when she failed to hold herself back, and her sister lowered her eyes and pushed her away.

—Yes. That’s right. Stop dodging the truth.

—Your filthy desire got rejected. It’s that simple.

Each time that state took her, Mira tried to fight it. She clenched the sleeping bag and counted under her breath. Her fingers curled. Her taut muscles tore the bag’s shell, pale feathers leaking like winter down.

—Wasn’t this the natural end? You never had the right to hope for that kind of bond. Not just because you’re both women. Not just because you’re “sisters.” There’s a simpler truth above all that.

—She hates you. She hates your childishness, your weakness, your helplessness. She hates that you stole the smooth life she should have had.

—You both know it. Even if she treats you with a sister’s gentleness now, that care is for the thing that belongs wholly to her, not for the “little sister” who stole everything.

—Nothing more, nothing less. She still hates the real you.

Every time, Mira’s efforts broke. Whether she bit her lip till it bled. Whether she keened and sobbed. Whether she vented on anything nearby, slaughtering who knows how many wild boars and bears. Whether she hurt herself any other way—nothing stopped the voice. It drove her toward the only conclusion.

—You know this and accepted it. She gets her satisfaction from your submission. You get to stay by her side. That’s your unearned, happiest penance.

—Even knowing that, you still failed. That night, you stepped outside the “little sister” role and showed her the real Mira—with all the dirty wants tied to that damned name.

—Then you were refused, as you should be.

—You ruined the fragile balance again, with your own hands. You lost the right to be by her side.

The line echoed, again and again. Her thoughts stormed, savage as coyotes tearing flesh. She would have preferred real coyotes chewing her open—meat wounds are kinder than this.

For her, those first nights after pitching camp were another round of Toka’s heart-modification surgery.

After the rabid spiral came the numbness.

The unfocused Mira Pengpeng had seen was a product of that grind. It was not a sign of peace.

Why wasn’t she keeping that respectful distance today? Why didn’t she let Pengpeng keep her privacy by not asking first? Why did she go straight for the soft spot, then take charge like a storm? Why did she kick the door off its hinges? Why did she nearly choke a Half-moon Mongoose to death—a lonely old man’s last companion?

That wasn’t her. Truth was, she hadn’t acted to solve Pengpeng’s problem.

Mira was only hunting for something to bleed on.

She didn’t care if today’s errand was Pengpeng’s family mess, fixing some ancient Nacha Tribe bicycle, or murder and loot on a roadside. She wouldn’t have cared.

She just needed something to do—anything to pry her free of her own mind for a while.

Yet no matter which way she ran, she couldn’t get off this stage.

Mira stood in the clearing beside Pengpeng’s house. Moonlight lit her hollow eyes, and the small vial in her palm.

Her shoulders trembled. The gray-white liquid quivered with them, ripples flickering like a curse insisting it wasn’t imagined.

This stuff again. Another crazed Nacha. Another snarling canine pet.

And that taunting voice, practically sing-songing, “Key clue right here, o~kay?”

Even when she only wanted to run, everything still rewound like the night Anta Copato was attacked—full of damned “coincidences,” like crows circling a red moon.

No doubt the one clutching the “script” was tugging her like a stringed puppet; she groped through fog and still couldn’t even prove the script was real.

They must be laughing now, right? Watching her act their pages to the letter, ticking off their errands, staging the cheapest fool’s farce—cracking her bond with her sister like porcelain dropped on stone.

Mira’s fingers tightened; her hollow eyes filled with hate and ache like stormwater. She’d seen Pengpeng’s foster father swing his cane—whoosh—and sweep a gray-white potion off the table. She’d realized she was still on their stage, and rage surged like a brushfire. She almost strangled his pet right there.

That rage flared again, a rebel blaze against the heavens. She steeled herself and crushed the precious evidence in her palm; gray-white liquid splashed like ash-colored rain.

“F*** you! Go die!! You must love your own little arrangement, huh?! You piece of s***!”

Mira hurled the glass grit at the far wall; shards bit into her palm like fangs. She felt no pain, only blood-pressure pounding like war drums, veins stretched to the snapping point.

“F*** your ‘script,’ f*** your gift, I… I—!”

Since Adelaide’s stern talk, she hadn’t cursed like this. Now she couldn’t hold any rhythm or breathe deep; she could only drive her fist into the wall, again and again, like a beast beating its cage.

She kept at it until knuckles wore blood and her voice rasped like sand. Then her strength ebbed, and she slid down the cratered wall like a wilted leaf.

So tired.

What… am I supposed to do now?

She couldn’t even lift her head to face the room. It drooped, heavy as a rain-soaked lotus.

Her lowered gaze fell into the rubble of tile beside her—onto a single dried flower.

A Nisa dried flower. Its language is unchanging kinship, warm pink base with a red heart, a thing sisters give to each other like lanterns in winter.

But the flower betrayed those words. Half its petals had fallen; the rest were wrinkled by long friction, pressed into a crumpled mass. The stem had snapped into thin, ugly pieces, like twigs in a drought.

She’d kept it in the inner pocket of her clothes, hidden like a sparrow’s hoard, until it dropped during her outburst.

Mira looked at the dried bloom, so stale it breathed decay. She gave a soft hum and let a tired, self-mocking smile crease her lips.

Right. I even brought this along back then.

She’d thought—if she got the chance—she’d give Adelaide the dried flower Pengpeng had helped her choose. She’d dreamed of Adelaide’s face: would she smile? Lift it to her nose and draw a gentle breath, wearing that adorable, dreamy look? Or gasp in surprise and hug her first?

Those ridiculous daydreams had kept her going, made her carve out room in a pack that had no space even for dry rations, guarding it like a candle from wind.

And what that careful guarding bought her… was what happened that night.

She never even got to give it. She carried it back to Sanda, this time with no tender care, and that self-sabotage battered the flower in her inner pocket into ruin.

Maybe that’s fitting.

This shattered, withered bloom is just like its language—sisterhood—already broken by her own hands.

The thought stripped even that bitter smile from her face. She bit down on her lower lip, iron taste blooming like rusted water.

Enough… enough of everything…

She couldn’t bear to look at the flower. She hardened her heart, reached toward it, ready to crush it to dust and fling it away.

Her fingertips brushed the half-rotten petal—and a ripple of magic tickled her skin, like a wave under moonlight.

Then she heard her sister’s voice.

—Your deduction is right. Everything… is because that “script” exists.

—And in this matter, you’re the only one I can trust, Mira.

—Please, help me—

The voice cut off there, clean as a blade. Mira froze.

It was a pre-recorded message, a voice array laid onto the dried petals like frost.

When… had it been set?

And what, exactly, did those words mean?

The sudden news threw her into turbulence. Her breath quickened like a startled deer.

Before her thoughts could settle, a distant explosion boomed again, rolling like thunder across stone.